Christie Blatchford:
Jeffrey Baldwin’s grandmother seen as ‘part of a team’ in his care,
before her role in his murder

A former supervisor with the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of
Toronto has admitted that Jeffrey Baldwin’s grandmother “was part of a
team” that was deciding the little boy’s future and ultimately sent him
to the hands of his killers.

Marina Sweet, long retired from the agency, was testifying Tuesday at
the Ontario coroner’s inquest into Jeffrey’s death.

Ms. Sweet left the CCAS 12 years ago, so her memory for details has
suffered, but she was a frank, no-nonsense witness.

In part because of how the grandmother, Elva Bottineau, had inveigled
herself into favour with CCAS staff, she was never subjected to internal
agency or criminal records checks.

Yet at the same time, as Ms. Sweet later told lawyer Philip Abbink,
who represents Jeffrey’s surviving siblings, even people just inquiring
about becoming foster parents, for instance, or who were volunteering
with the agency, had to go through internal and/or police checks.

“Because we knew this family,” Ms. Sweet said at one point, “it
coloured what we did, I think.”

In the result, Bottineau’s criminal conviction in the 1969 death of
her own first baby and her husband Norman Kidman’s convictions for
assaulting two of her other youngsters in 1978 went undiscovered.

All this information — and more sobering details, in particular about
Bottineau’s potential dangerousness to children — was in CCAS files.

Yet because Bottineau had come to be seen as an ally and, ironically,
“as a strength,” the agency instead supported or facilitated the
transfer of Jeffrey and three of his siblings — all the children of
Bottineau and Kidman’s daughter Yvonne and her boyfriend Richard Baldwin
— to the grandparents’ care.

“Elva was part of a team looking after this young family,” Ms. Sweet
told coroner’s counsel Jill Witkin.